


But It Will

by BBJ_3



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: Impossible, M/M, Oneshot, Pre-Slash, don't know why I ship this but I did, it's probably because they're the most interesting characters, that explains a lot of my ships lately, thoughts, wanting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 02:25:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12761157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBJ_3/pseuds/BBJ_3
Summary: He can press the thoughts aside during the day, but when he lays down beside her, they churn around his brain. Observations and internal monologue about what he wants and who (which isn't the person sleeping beside him). He knows better than most what's possible, and what he wants he can't even begin to fathom.





	But It Will

He wanted to take care of him. The thought haunted him. Frustrated him. Left him wanting to claw his eyes out because he already had a person he’d risked himself, changed himself, and rearranged himself to protect. Every stolen kiss and midnight call – dragging him across the city left him exhausted. But acting on whatever this was – if it amounted to anything at all – would only be more trying.

She didn’t have autism. She questioned him, challenged him when he wouldn’t listen to anybody else. Things got heated – sent his pulse racing in a good way. Then she cooled it down when he least expected it. She laughed in his face. Went stone-faced and told him ‘not to get personal’ as if anything between them could be anything but personal. They were engaged. Weren’t they?

With him, nothing was personal and yet…everything was. Boundaries were difficult. Honesty pervaded everything, and eye contact left him without anything to guide himself through the mess. Yet when he said ‘you’re arrogant,’ it wasn’t an insult. When he said ‘you’re better than those surgeons,’ it wasn’t a compliment. These were facts.

Every bit of sarcasm found purpose. When he looked at him…nothing made sense anymore. She was perfect. He was a mess. Not even a mess. An illusion of a mess – the kind of mess iodine left. Yellow but clean –cleaner than before the mess.

Not like it was a mess he could get into – touch, hold, kiss. A mess he wanted to grab hold of and just – mess up even more. Bright blue eyes and small – not height small, the kind of grab hold of and straight on kiss with a feel of your hands encasing a waist small. Not worrisome thin like she sometimes got. Thin – I don’t live to eat thin. Kind of person you didn’t have to cook for – wouldn’t need to do anything fancy for because saying they mattered would be taken at face value. Love might be confusing, but it’d be taken as truth – straightforward and simple. Beautiful kind of simplicity where motives weren’t questioned. Because he was arrogant. Arrogant people didn’t feel the need to lie.

Send him away. Ignore him. Pretend he didn’t make him feel. What else could he do? Save a life? Pull a miracle out of facts? Get somehow as pale as a dead man but unbearably alive in comparison with everyone else. Eyes on – anything and everything but other eyes. When that concentration landed, Murphy stole his breath away. Hauntingly blue – eyes that burned. No intention, no understanding of how – just affection, blazing and cruel in its innocuousness.                

At night, when he’s staring at the ceiling – her arm a weight across his chest, his mind goes to kinder, crueler, unrealistic fantasies. A love where his words are taken as they are. Where apologies are understood, accepted, seen as they are. Where consideration is as easy as learning the road map once – because some maps keep changing, and when death comes up every day like a pest in the wood, a single road map to loving someone seems like a dream.

Browne agrees. He can see it in her eyes when she looked at Murphy. She jumped to his defense. Her kindness irked. As if Murphy needed to be protected from him – and maybe he did. Beautiful, obsessive, blunt, genius, determine – everything threatened to tear him apart.

Love didn’t feel like this. Wanting to just hold someone, to feel the weight of them in your arms. Feel the fidgeting before he settled. Wait a day, two days, a week, months, however long it took for that to be natural. For him to relax as this was where he belonged. That wasn’t right. They didn’t belong together. So he found himself lashing out at Murphy, giving Browne all the more opportunity to protect him. It itched. Itched like when the woman he loves tells him he’s not enough. Itches like when she undermines him. When she’s a lawyer before she’s anything else – but shouldn’t that go both ways? Shouldn’t he be frustrated because Murphy’s always a doctor – can’t stop thinking about anatomy and pathology and everything that makes them the same, and she’s all about making that fit within the confines or morality without moral being anywhere near it.

She makes things complicated. He makes them simple. It’s as easy as that. When they disagree – even without disagreeing, Murphy leaves it where it stands. She digs. Grabs hold and makes it seem like a malignant tumor with a patient who refuses surgery. They lie, side by side, and hope curdles between them. Judgments of selfishness and differences between them. There are so many ‘what ifs’ that arise like secrets. Pulls rank – fiance rank for work issues where she can’t pull surname rank. It’s difficult. Complicated.

Murphy isn’t less complicated. He’s different complicated. Closing his eyes, he tries to sleep. He’ll have the same shadows tomorrow that he has tonight. The same inexplicable want to be someone he’s not with someone who couldn’t possibly be with him. It’s the same story, but he managed to endure the one he’s in. If things fractures (and they will), it won’t be his doing (but it will). He’ll be where she wants him as much as he can be – clamping down on his rebellious nature to appease her rebellion. They’ll make it work (but he knows they won’t), and he’ll avoid getting exhausted around Murphy because he knows he’ll snap (and kiss him which Murphy will accept for whatever he tells him it is – unless he tells him it’s because of love. Love worries him. Terrifies him).

 

It terrifies Neil too.


End file.
